Well, this
starts out being a “Walter Mitty” romp[1] around
the dinner table, possibly in the fantasies of Paul Lohman. That’s the first
third of the book, and the reader buys into this take.
It’s in
second third of the book that we suspect that this might be a comedy of errors[2] ,
although we note that things have gone to the noir side of story-telling, and we
hope that the author resolves some of the nagging questions sooner rather than
later, and with a positive, life-embracing twist.
Unfortunately,
we move into the final third of the novel, assuming the worst case. They (this broad family clan) are all mad,
psychotic sociopaths, out to whimsically murder anyone and everyone without a
care in the world.
In the
end, most readers will feel glad that their last family dinner party wound up
with only a drunk spouse and a petulant teen; and will be glad to avoid seeing family
for another year.
[1]
From
Wikipedia: “in James Thurber's short story "The
Secret Life of Walter Mitty", first
published in The New Yorker on March 18, 1939.
Mitty is a meek, mild man with a vivid fantasy life: in a few dozen paragraphs he imagines himself a
wartime pilot, an emergency-room surgeon, and a devil-may-care killer. The
character's name has come into more general use to refer to an ineffectual
dreamer and appears in several dictionaries.”
[2]
From
Wikipedia: A comedy of errors is a narrative work (often a play) that is
light and often humorous or satirical in tone, in which the action usually features
a series of comic instances of mistaken identity, and which typically
culminates in a happy resolution of the thematic conflict. A slight variation of the "comedy of
errors" discipline is farcical theatre, which revolves around humor caused by the foolish mistakes of
unintelligent characters and the chaos that derives from it. Examples of farces
include British sitcom Fawlty Towers and Men Behaving Badly, as well as films like Monty Python's Life of Brian and Charlie Chaplin's The Great Dictator.
[1]
From
Wikipedia: “in James Thurber's short
story "The Secret
Life of Walter Mitty", first published in The New Yorker on March 18, 1939. Mitty is a meek, mild man with a vivid fantasy life:
in a few dozen paragraphs he imagines himself a wartime pilot, an
emergency-room surgeon, and a devil-may-care killer. The character's name has
come into more general use to refer to an ineffectual dreamer and appears in
several dictionaries.”
[2]
From
Wikipedia: A comedy of errors is a narrative work (often a play) that is light and often humorous or
satirical in tone, in which the action usually features a series of comic
instances of mistaken identity, and which typically culminates in a happy
resolution of the thematic conflict. A
slight variation of the "comedy of errors" discipline is farcical
theatre, which revolves around humor caused by the foolish mistakes of unintelligent
characters and the chaos that derives from it. Examples of farces include
British sitcom Fawlty Towers and Men Behaving Badly,
as well as films like Monty Python's Life of Brian and Charlie Chaplin's The Great Dictator.
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